While praising the film Dunkirk’s depiction of the heroic British retreat from the French coast during the first year of World War II, Michael Coren argues that it should have included an important but oft-forgotten episode:

The general view is that while Nazism was, of course, inherently evil, it took time for its repugnance to become obviously manifest. It’s assumed that it wasn’t until the [systematic slaughter of the Jews began in the summer of 1941] that the authentic nature of National Socialism was revealed, and that on the battlefield it was the eastern front and the war against the Soviets that exposed the genocidal nature of Adolf Hitler’s creed. Not so. . . .

On May 28, 1940, in Wormhoudt, France, a brigade of the 48th South Midland Infantry Division successfully delayed a German advance until they had run out of ammunition. Many of them [were captured and] moved at gunpoint toward a barn. They were immediately shocked at the casual violence of their captors: unarmed soldiers were beaten and wounded men were simply shot dead. . . .

Around 100 exhausted, hungry and defenseless men were marched into a barn, thinking that perhaps they were there to rest and be fed. . . . The Germans then threw in a number of grenades.

Two sergeants, Stanley Moore and Augustus Jennings, gave their lives by throwing themselves on the grenades so as to save some of their men. At this point, the SS marched the rest of the prisoners out of the barn in fives and shot them. Concerned that the massacre was taking too long and providing the British with time to try to escape, the Germans then simply machine-gunned everybody in the barn. . . .

Do see Dunkirk. . . . But remember why that heroism and sacrifice were necessary and what those men were fighting for. The tragedy is that struggle never completely disappears.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.